From: Ryan Lackey <rdl@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 20:09:36 +0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Ryan's eternity DDS (Re: technical issues of the list)
In-Reply-To: <199711182158.VAA01101@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <199711191203.HAA16737@the-great-machine.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.ul> writes:
> Ryan Lackey <rdl@mit.edu> writes:
> > I'm pretty sure all 5 years fit on one cd-rom -- I've been using 4
> > years as an eternity dds dataset, along with some other stuff, and I
> > think it is less than 500mb, although one of the problems with my
> > current eternity file system under linux is that there is no way of
> > telling how big a directory is (yay VFS kludges).
> 
> Sounds like you are building a file system interface to a distributed
> data store, cool.  Want to give us a brief description of what it does?
> I know I'd be interested, I'm sure others would too.
> 
> Adam

I've mostly just used postgres, a db, for doing database stuff, and kludged
together a disgusting collection of kernel patches and usermode processes to
make data appear as a directory structure in a modified version of the
ext2fs (actually, most if it is in the VFS level as it should be, but I didn't
know enough about it when I started to cleanly separate the two.  Oh well).

It's not distributed, it's not reliable, it's not secure.  It's just me 
learning
how to play with virtual file systems.  And unfortunately most of the code 
is stolen from commercial/proprietary software, so I can't really release it.

My current Eternity DDS plan is to have a linux file system and an http
interface to the data store up in the first incarnation.  I'm at the stage
of playing with technology for the interface layer, and having a vaguely
workable plan for inter-server communication.  Once I have something which
can be demonstrated, I'll post an announcement to the technical people who
would be interested.

I've entered the Eternity DDS idea into a MIT-sponsored new business
competition, etc.

My current Eternity homepage is at http://sof.mit.edu/eternity/, although
it's rather sparse.
-- 
Ryan Lackey
rdl@mit.edu
http://mit.edu/rdl/